Coming Home
by 90TheGeneral09
Summary: It's 1975, and the USS Stingray, one of the last Balao-class submarines still in service, is being retired from active duty. Due to be put in long-term storage at a Navy "mothball fleet" in Norfolk, the Stingray's last skipper wonders how he can bring himself to say goodbye to the boat he's commanded for five years. It won't be easy.
1. Chapter 1- The Final Voyage

**Chapter I- The Final Voyage**

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**A/N: I got the idea for this story from the old picture of a former commander of the USS Stingray that hangs on the wall in LTCDR Dodge's cabin throughout the film. It's a short story- only two chapters- but I think it does well in telling the story of the Stingray's former life and how her men felt about her in the days when the Navy still regularly used diesel submarines. Also, I could find no indications the US Navy operated submarines in the Atlantic at all during World War II. The American submarine war was focused on Japan, and that's where the Stingray would almost certainly have fought. So, as for her being sent to a 'mothball fleet' in Norfolk, VA, I just decided that Navy bureaucracy could have been the reason for that as well as anything.**

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It was September 20th, 1975. The _USS Stingray_, SS-161, cut through the calm seas of the Atlantic under a sunny, nearly cloudless sky as she ran on the surface, her diesels growling at cruising speed. Atop the conning tower, Commander Charles Gray Hunter, V, stood and watched the coast of North Carolina far off to port, and the ocean stretching forth before him in all other directions. It was warm, sunny- and however it had ended, Vietnam was over. No better day for the _Stingray_ to make a run on the surface. The war was over, and they were going home.

The Navy still planned on using diesels for a while yet, but the _Stingray_'s days in the service were over. A list of boats had been published to the various submarine squadrons, telling them which boats were staying in service. The _Stingray_'s name was not on it, and neither was any other submarine of the Balao class. They'd had a good, long run, defying age and obsolescence to remain in service one decade after another. But the end had finally come, and this time when the _Stingray_ sailed into Norfolk, a port she'd never even visited before, she would not be sailing back out.

The boat's transfer to the mothball fleet being gathered in the major Atlantic ports had been a last-minute decision. After reaching Pearl Harbor, the crew were informed that instead of leaving the _Stingray_ at San Diego, they would sail on through the Panama Canal and straight across the Gulf of Mexico, on up past much of the East Coast to Norfolk, Virginia. The men who wanted to leave the Navy sooner than later could get off while they were at Pearl. To a man, young and old, each of the _Stingray_'s crew had chosen to stay aboard for the two weeks of the final voyage to Norfolk. None of the men had been ready to leave her.

The trip had been uneventful, made in good weather and entirely through sailing on the surface. A highlight of the voyage had been Panama, when the incredulous locals had stared at the aging American submarine- whose few visible crewmen were cheerfully 'waving' to a group of disgruntled-looking Russian 'tourists'. Seaman Olds, 'waving' from beside the 5-inch deck gun, said later it was the best laugh he'd ever had. The Russians had clearly been expecting something besides a World War II-vintage diesel when somebody had told them an 'American attack submarine' would be coming through the Panama Canal. Hunter considered it one of the highlights in his career to have sent those 'tourists' home disappointed.

The _Stingray_ had been a long time coming back to any home port to stay; after being constructed in San Francisco, she hadn't been in sight of a single of the 48 continental United States since 1942. She'd spent more than six years at war, sinking half a dozen Japanese ships during World War II, guarding the Pusan Perimeter and patrolling the coast of South Korea. The Navy had then seen fit to send her on patrols up and down the coast of Vietnam, and through her periscopes and hydrophones the Stingray's third mostly-new set of crewmen listened and watched as the war grew from bad to worse. Navy SEALs relied on boats like the _Stingray_ to make appearances where no American was welcome, and when the ones lucky enough to come back returned, the _Stingray_ was always there to get them back out again.

That was where Commander Hunter had come in. He'd taken command of the _USS Stingray_ in 1970, with the Vietnam War in full swing. When the United States withdrew in 1973, Hunter had expected to return to patrolling off the North Korean or Soviet coast, or perhaps returning to Pearl Harbor for another refit of the aging submarine. Her latest had been in 1958.

But the Navy'd had other ideas- they needed "Hunter's Buccaneers", as the three-boat wolfpack Hunter commanded was called, to stay around. Running between Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and occasionally North Vietnam, the _Stingray_ had made many daring patrols in places a US Navy sub had no business even existing. Once in 1972, straying far north to insert a group of men led by the legendary black-ops Marine commander Francis Xavier Hummel, the _Stingray_ had nearly been rammed by a Chinese destroyer. The _Stingray_ had flooded her tanks and dropped to the bottom in a hurry; with the destroyer banging away with its sonar above them, even some of Hummel's Marines looked worried as the depth charges started exploding overhead.

Standing there on the bridge, Hunter had been as terrified as anybody, but even more fearful of showing it. Something- he had to do something. He began walking the passageways of the boat, not speaking since they'd gone silent, but nodding and doing what he could to reassure the men. Then he'd reached the galley, and Major Hummel was leaned up against a bulkhead with a cup of coffee in his hand. He nodded to Hunter, his eyes stormy and serious- but also respectful. He trusted Hunter completely, and did not believe in hating Navy men as a rule like so many Marines did. If you were risking your life beside him, service affiliation was irrelevant to somebody like Hummel. Even as another charge exploded in the water above them, rattling the _Stingray_'s hull like a beer can and making the lights dim, Hummel didn't so much as flinch. The two culinary specialists in the boat were pretty calm for the circumstances, but Hummel looked like he was at home in his living room. It was as if he was tolerating the Chinese warship above them, humouring their belief that they would soon kill the foreign submarine beneath them.

And it had given Hunter an idea.

Hunter had walked over to the sailors running the galley, motioning to indicate he, too, wanted a cup of coffee. One of the sailors poured him a cup and handed the mug to Hunter, looking vaguely curious. Was this something good commanders did, some secret they had? You drank coffee and just acted like it was no big deal? Hunter knew, in the instant he picked up the mug, that was what Hummel was doing. And that's what he, skipper of the boat, needed to do.

Walking back through the _Stingray_'s narrow passageways, sipping from the coffee mug as he went, Hunter stopped by the engine room before returning to the bridge. Chief Petty Officer Black, head of the engineering section, nodded in greeting. Nodding back, briefly glancing around at the scared faces of the younger, junior-ranked sailors standing by to act as damage control, Hunter realised how important the higher-ranking men were in moments like this. One of the enginemen in the room, Seaman Cameron Olds, was not yet nineteen. He'd worked so hard to earn his silver dolphins before this latest patrol- just barely, he'd made it. Olds shivered a little as a concussive blast in the water shook the boat yet again, but he wasn't panicked; just scared.

All of the men were that way; no submariner could be flighty or prone to panic, but it was simply idiotic to pretend that you never felt fear. To be a good petty officer or commissioned officer, though, Hunter had learned firsthand that the higher your rank, the less you were allowed to show it. The skipper didn't have time to be scared; wearing the golden dolphins meant regulations all but forbid it, too.

So Hunter stood there a moment, yelling at himself not to so much as blink when the next boom came through the water, and the hull rattled yet again. He locked eyes with Black, who seemed to be trying to say something. Black cut his eyes at the sailors around him, raising his eyebrows a little. See what I mean? The look said. Say something already.

Then the _Stingray_'s third commander took a nice, big drink from his mug, savouring the taste of the creamy French Roast. He made sure to smile a little, as if so at ease that enjoying a good cup of coffee was the most pressing thing on his mind.

Then Hunter looked up and scanned the expectant faces of the men around him. In a low voice, but one with such confidence that even he was surprised, Hunter said, "It's all right, fellas. They won't get us."

"Damn straight they won't, sir." Chief Petty Officer Black's dark brown eyes, almost the same color as his skin, were all business. His tone of voice brooked no argument. "They ain't gonna sink this sub, no way."

Nodding again to the men in the engine room, Hunter had turned and ducked, stepping through the small hatch and making his way back up towards the bridge. Each time he passed a group of men, Hunter learned to repeat the phrase, always with that cup of coffee in his hand. "They won't get us."

And they didn't.

After an hour, the Chinese ship gave up and went home, either figuring she'd scored a kill so direct nothing was left or that her prey had somehow escaped. The _Stingray_ waited another two before lifting off the ocean floor, and thirty minutes after that reached her destination. Rising to periscope depth off a remote section of tropical Chinese coast, the _Stingray_ tentatively prepared to surface just enough that her conning tower's hatch would be exposed to the air. Hummel's Marines soon deployed, and the _Stingray_'s skipper had crouched low on the top of the conning tower, scanning the coast and all ends of the horizon for threats. One shot in his boat's direction and he'd crash-dive his boat in a hurry- even if it meant slamming the hatch with him still outside.

His face darkened with earth-coloured face paint and wearing the best Marine jungle camouflage available, Major Hummel had been almost invisible as he joined his men in the water. For now, they clung to the _Stingray_'s hull, but when the sub started to dive they'd simply swim the hundred yards to shore, wearing at least fifty pounds of gear. It was a method Hummel and his elite Marines were almost entirely alone in their willingness to do at all, let alone multiple times.

Hunter had been content to simply nod to the Marines, wishing them good luck with a few quiet words, but Hummel had reached out from the water, his soaking wet hand firmly gripping Hunter's. The men locked eyes one more time, and Hummel said, "Thanks for the ride, Commander. Good luck."

The _Stingray_'s skipper had nodded, moved but unsure of what to say. Finally, he said, "Likewise. Kick some ass out there." The Marines had grinned at that, and so had Hummel. Then Hunter had crawled back to the hatch, closed it and gave the order to dive just as Hummel and his twenty Recon Marines struck off into the water.

That had been only three years ago, but it felt like another lifetime. Those days were over for the _Stingray_, over for Hunter- and such daring times of diesel wolf-packs and their fearless captains might never be seen in the Navy again. Hunter had no regrets; he'd served his time, done his duty, and though his greatest accomplishments would never go on record, he could even go home knowing he'd scored a kill. That Chinese destroyer had suffered an 'accident' when on patrol along that same section of coast a month later, when the _Stingray_ was returning to pick Hummel and his men up.

Yes, the Peking government had been pissed, but being unable to prove the United States had any role in the sinking, they could do nothing. Just the same had been true of Hummel's Marines- their combat record was sealed even for the members of the Silent Service who brought them to the faraway shores where they operated. But even the rumours were impressive, and the stories before long became legends. But even though much of his career was classified, glory had smiled on now soon-to-be Brigadier General Hummel many times; hailed as the next Audie Murphy, a second Chesty Puller, he had received everything from the Purple Heart and Bronze Star straight up to the Medal of Honor.

Fate had kept different plans for Commander Charles G. Hunter; he had received multiple Navy Commendation Medals, but nothing higher. It had become a joke first among Hunter and his XO and Chief of the Boat, but by this final journey it was a running joke among the whole crew. Speaking as if one was Commander Hunter, you'd say something like, "I did twenty years in the submarines and all I got was this stupid medal". Hunter was a popular man among the crew; those who'd been with him off the coast of China in '72 had taken to calling him "Blackbeard" Hunter, after the famous pirate. While his superiors were hardly thrilled with the nickname, the men aboard the _Stingray_ loved it, and crewmen joining the _Stingray_ became "Blackbeard's Hunters" forever after.

"You're drifting off again, Blackbeard," a voice said beside him, and Hunter jumped a little. He really had been far off with his thoughts this time. His XO, a tall, lanky blonde man about thirty-five years old, was Lieutenant Commander John Clayton. He was staying in while Hunter was retiring, and odds were Clayton would be in the Navy long enough to see the diesels start giving way to nukes. That was all anybody ever talked about these days; nuclear this, nuclear that. Hunter was a DBF man- he was glad he wouldn't be in the Silent Service the day they retired their last diesel boat. After commanding the _Stingray_ for five years and sailing with diesel submarines for twenty, he couldn't imagine sailing any other way.

Hunter was 5' 11, a decidedly average height, and had brown-black hair to Clayton's silvery-blonde, and gray eyes to Clayton's sharp blue. He was slightly shorter than his executive officer, and while being shorter than a subordinate had often bugged Hunter through the years, he didn't much mind with Clayton. The man was a highly skilled submarine officer, and more important than that, a very good friend. When Hunter glanced over at Clayton, who was also surveying the ocean and coastline from atop the conning tower, Clayton was smiling, but his eyes seemed a little sad. He seemed to be having his own qualms over saying goodbye to the _Stingray_, too.

"They'll just mothball her, skipper, you know that, right? It's not like she's going to the scrapper's," Clayton said, seeming to have picked the very thought from Hunter's mind.

"I know, John," Hunter said with a sigh, "But the Balao's are gone, and you just wait, pretty soon it's gonna be all about these big nukes. No more diesels- like they just have no place in this man's Navy anymore. Hell, weren't they good enough for the last thirty years?"

"Can't control what the Navy does with this stuff, sir," Clayton said with empathy. "Every sailor born has wanted to keep things the way they were when he joined. If one's succeeded I'd like to meet the man." Hunter laughed. "Besides," Clayton said more seriously, "If we don't step up our game, the Russians will. Maybe going all nukes is the best way to fight 'em. Nuke boats don't have to refuel, ever. All they need is food for the crew."

It was true, all of it. But that didn't change the fact that beautiful, slim gray boats like the _Stingray_, with their speedboat-like hulls that cut through the sea's surface like a knife, were going and soon to be gone. Hunter could already see the day coming when boats like the _Stingray_, with their cramped quarters and growling diesel engines, would be relics. In their place would be hulking, silent cigar-shaped tubes of titanium and steel, faster underwater than on the surface and able to obliterate cities with the launch of a handful of missiles. That was the future, and if it made the U.S. Navy better able to stand against America's enemies, then so be it. But Hunter didn't have to like it.


	2. Chapter 2- Farewell to a Submarine

**Chapter II- Farewell to a Submarine**

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The _USS Stingray_, SS-161, had docked beside a sub-tender anchored in Norfolk Naval Base; the tender would be towing her to her new home, tethered to so many other aging and rusting vessels the Navy no longer needed but refused to scrap or throw away. While Hunter was dismayed to see any vessel falling into disuse and disrepair, it gave him hope in a way. Many, very many of those mothball fleet ships had gun turrets, torpedo tubes, AA cannons still aimed at the sky. Maybe whichever admiral had thought these mothball fleets up knew what he was doing; you never knew when the old ways might be needed again.

The crew had disembarked in an orderly, disciplined manner, each man saluting the US flag the _Stingray_ flew as he exited the deck hatch and headed for the waiting motorboat. The launch could carry more than the _Stingray_'s full crew complement, so only one trip would be needed. Hunter made a point of being the last off; taking a captain's privilege, he toured the Stingray's now-empty passageways, breathing that musty, metallic air one last time.

CPO Black found Hunter in the captain's cabin, fixing an old black-and-white framed photo of himself on the wall. The picture showed Hunter in his dress blues, smiling with quiet pride at his latest accomplishment- taking command of the _USS Stingray_. He was another rank higher now, and five years older. Looking around his small cabin, Hunter sighed. For five years this boat had been his honour to command; for half a decade the _Stingray_ had been his home. The home of every man who served aboard her. She was one of the last submarines still in service that had actually fought in World War II, out there a year after Pearl Harbor, giving the Japs a bloody nose for those who couldn't. The _Stingray_ had even been one of twelve Navy submarines that had joined the _USS Missouri_ in sailing into Tokyo Bay on the day of Japan's surrender. She'd sailed clear across the Pacific and back again, exacting six kills from the Empire of Japan and narrowly escaping death over a dozen times. Few subs or ships had ever experienced war at sea so fully.

Hunter felt a sadness that was difficult to place or define, but as real as the air he was breathing. This sub had saved his ass countless times, seen dozens of men and multiple skippers through safe when by all logic their luck should have run out. The men had come to believe, over time, that the _Stingray_ had inherited the spirit of a great pirate ship; she played by her own rules and made her own luck.

It was gonna hurt like hell to leave it all behind.

"I'm sorry, sir." CPO Black said, and Hunter startled a little at the sound of his voice. Turning in his chair to face the big petty officer standing in the tiny doorway, Hunter said quietly, "At least they won't scrap her, George. That's got to count for something."

"That's right, sir," Black said, nodding firmly. Then he laughed a little, thumping a big hand affectionately on the _Stingray_'s hull. "She'd probably break loose and just run free out into the Atlantic on her own if they tried." But even Black, making that joke that told so much about how he and the rest of the men felt about their boat, sounded sad. He was a tough man, as tough a Navy NCO as Hunter had ever seen. But his voice sounded a little constricted, and his eyes looked a little moist. Hunter suspected most everybody was displaying those kind of symptoms today.

Finally Hunter could delay no longer. He and CPO Black were the only men left aboard; they were the last ones. Hunter stood up, following Black out of his cabin's hatch and towards the ladder that would take them up on deck. Behind him, the picture of Lieutenant Commander Charles Hunter slid sideways where it hung, now hanging at a slant. Had Hunter been there to see that chance occurrence, he'd have attributed it to an act of the _Stingray_ as surely as a clergyman would attribute certain occurrences to an act of God.

To Hunter, that was just how the _Stingray_ did things. She could run smooth and sweet and pass an inspection with flying colours, or have everything go so wrong not even the coffee machine worked right.

It was like it all depended on what the boat's mood was that day. Like you had to treat the _Stingray_ nice, spend that extra time on her, if you wanted her to look after you when it mattered.

Hunter emerged from the _Stingray_'s deck hatch and marched smartly down the deck towards the stern, following CPO Black as he boarded the Navy launch. The sailors steering it nodded respectfully, saluting as Hunter came aboard. They kept their silence, not wanting to intrude on the thoughts of the _Stingray_'s crew. They'd seen this look before; it was like some fifty men were saying goodbye to a girl they loved, all at once.

The helmsman gunned the engines, and the launch moved off. Steering port around the Stingray- the tender was on her starboard side- the launch's helmsman slowed the boat's speed slightly as he moved past the long, slim, almost shark-like form of the _USS Stingray_. Her hull, worn and battered by the merciless salt of the sea, still shone in the afternoon sun, the gray paint defiantly holding out some of its dull lustre. Then they were off, heading to the distant pier and hopefully, their families. Submarine men had had nothing to do with the politics or problems of the war in Vietnam, but many civilians made no such distinctions. To many of them, a man in uniform was a baby-killer, whoever he was and whatever badges he wore. The dolphins were only appreciated fully by other men who wore them. For some of these men, the only family seeing them off the _Stingray_ today were right there beside them on the launch, wearing those gold or silver dolphins. The Silent Service was a brotherhood, and for some that was the only family they had.

Hunter looked back at the slowly retreating form of the _Stingray_, seeming to bob up and down as the launch moved with the ocean swells. He soon gave it up, though; while many of the men continued to gaze back at her, Hunter could not. He felt very stiff, as if something had seized him about the heart and throat, determined to squeeze breath from his lungs and tears from his eyes. Hunter couldn't bear to look at his boat because he loved her. That sub had brought so many fathers, sons, brothers and cousins home safe. She had defied the odds again and again, and more than earned the six battle stars studding her conning tower.

Now it was all over.

Commander Charles Hunter wondered about the future as the launch moved away, its own diesel engines growling like angry bulldogs and churning up foam behind them. Would the _Stingray_ ever see the open ocean again? Would anyone look at her in ten years or twenty and see not an aging, obsolete and probably rusting submarine, but a tin can that had done everything she was designed for and saved her crew's asses a dozen times? Hunter wondered about that a lot. It hurt to think that someday, future generations of sailors would probably look at tiny, dart-like submarines like the Balao class and wonder how anyone had ever been nuts enough to sail in one.

_Yeah_, Hunter thought, _it took crazy all right. A special, crazy kind of courage… like I got. Like we all got_. Submariners were a special kind of sailor, and even in the Navy everybody else thought they were all nuts. And if future generations of submariners, even, chose to see their diesel "tin fish" driving grandfathers as absolutely the craziest men who ever lived, then so be it. The sailors of the _Stingray_ had heard far worse accolades applied to them.

But suddenly, Hunter _did_ feel the urge to look back. He noticed the path they were taking through the harbor was going to block the _Stingray_ from view soon, and Hunter realised he needed, very much, to see the old girl one more time.

Hunter turned just before the _USS Hughes_, a destroyer also set for permanent retirement in the mothball fleet, blocked the _Stingray_ from view. He had just a minute or so to look, to gaze back at the old gray submarine with the number 161. In the sky the sun was shining down brightly, and Hunter suddenly saw a flash, a gleam of light reflecting off the _Stingray_'s gray steel hull… and directly back towards him. Hunter had a vague feeling his boat had wanted to say goodbye to him, too. By the time they reached the pier, Commander Charles "Blackbeard" Hunter the Fifth, due to retire- most likely by pure coincidence- on the same day the _USS Stingray_ would be struck from the Navy's roster, had made up his mind. This submarine had a soul if any ship ever did, and somehow, Hunter was sure that glint of sunlight off her hull hadn't been any coincidence. It had looked like she was waving goodbye to him.

That was how Hunter would always remember it.


End file.
